This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

OTTAWA—A parliamentary watchdog repeatedly stonewalled in his efforts to get information about Canada’s military mission in Iraq is calling for legislative changes to beef up his ability to pry data from government departments.

A frustrated Jean-Denis Fréchette, the parliamentary budget officer, says the department of national defence rebuffed nearly all attempts by his office to get details about the costs of the ongoing mission.

The budget officer released a report Tuesday on the costs of Canada’s ongoing air and ground mission to battle Islamic State extremists in Iraq. The report says the cost of the six-month mission, now due to end in April, will ring in at between $128 million and $166 million.

But Fréchette says his research was hindered by the lack of co-operation from the defence department.

The budget officer, a post created by the Conservatives to boost accountability, now says legislation needs to be amended because the lack of co-operation by the government is undermining his watchdog role.

Article Continued Below

“I think the legislation will have to be clarified to help the (parliamentary budget office) to have access to information,” he said Tuesday.

The budget officer launched his study of the costs of Operation Impact last October, soon after Parliament authorized the military mission, which involves troops as advisers and aircraft as part of the multi-national bombing campaign.

Defence officials refused to meet with Fréchette’s staff. They refused to let budget office staff attend briefings held for “stakeholders,” including academics and defence specialists.

Asked for the department’s own cost estimate of the mission, defence officials refused, claiming it was a cabinet confidence. Asked for how many hours aircraft had flown on the mission so far, that was refused too on the grounds it wasn’t financial or economic data.

“It is somewhat disturbing that senior officials take it upon themselves to interpret the Parliament of Canada Act . . . in a very narrow way that would allow them to deny the information that we need to inform parliamentarians.

“Obviously their approach to transparency is very selective.”

Rebuffed in official channels, budget office staff became like gumshoe detectives, trying to find information where ever they could.

For example, they analyzed the defence department’s photos of CF-18s operating over Iraq to learn more about the weapons they were carrying and then turned to the United States Air Force to learn how much those weapons cost. They reviewed the costs of previous missions, including the air campaign over Libya, to provide a guide to the potential costs of the current mission.

In their report, they gave an estimate that the mission, now scheduled to end in April, is costing the department between $4.4 million and $7.1 million a week. Those costs include flying the CF-18 fighters at $16,750 an hour and dropping bombs, which range in price from $16,448 to $31,890.

Extending the mission to a year could range between $242 million and $351 million, the report said.

The Conservative government announced last September that it was sending 69 special operations soldiers to northern Iraq on a noncombat mission to act as advisers to local Kurdish and Iraqi fighters battling Islamic State fighters.

In October, the government sent six CF-18 fighter jets, supported by a CC-150 Polaris refueller aircraft and two CP-140 Aurora reconnaissance aircraft, to join the multinational campaign striking Islamic State targets.

The aircraft are based in Kuwait, where some 600 military personnel provide support for the air campaign.

On Monday, Defence Minister Jason Kenney released the incremental costs of the mission to date, pegging the price tag at $122 million.

That doesn’t include salaries and other costs the Defence Department would incur if troops had not been deployed.

In a statement, the defence department said it would provide the budget officer with “information that he needs to do his job, within the mandate Parliament has given him.”

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com